Avoiding Humiliation By Embracing Humility

Post navigation

As a toddler, I lost trust for a parent who believed that I was guilty of something that I was not. At the time, I was 3 years old, and the only child my parents had. We were visiting the home of my Dad’s longtime friend, who had three daughters; One 10 years older, One a Year Older, and One a Year younger. The daughters and I were in the parlor, where there was a chair, and a lamp on a pole stand next to the chair. While I was standing apart from them, and watching them chase each other around the chair (who knows why?), one of the girls bumped into the lampstand, and it fell over with a loud crash, and was broken. All of the parents came running into the front room and asked, in an angry tone ‘who broke the lamp?’ The girls pointed at me and said that I broke it. In my innocence and shocked disbelief (that was my first awareness that people lie), I just looked at my Dad with what was my heart-felt, all consuming need to be saved and protected from these people. He yelled at me and spanked me and left me crying and uncomforted while the girls laughed at me. That was 60 years ago, and it still hurts. After that, I never felt safe again until I proved, to myself, that I could protect myself, which took quite a few years. There is a relentless misery in knowing that the only people on this earth that you should be able to rely on absolutely to keep you from harm, are the ones who first introduce you to the idea that, among far too many humans, violence equals power, and that the truth offers no protection unless you can prove it to someone who is willing to listen and cares enough to do so.

My mother left my father in the Spring, after I turned 7 the previous October. She left me, and my two little brothers, 4 years old and 6 months old, like we were dirty laundry she didn’t want, in a lonely, rented house that was no longer a home. My Dad was devastated and unprepared, and my four year-old brother and I went to stay with my Mother’s sister, who lived down the street in another world. My infant baby brother was taken to live in a foster home. I think that this was pretty much the beginning of my relationship with hate.. Until I truly turned my life over to Christ (out of desperation and fear) in January of 2011, The experiences in my life up to about age 24 were at best, selfish, and at worst, hate-driven. The first 24 years of my life were driven by what happened to me at 3. They were taken down a darker, meaner path at age 7, and at 24, I was robbed and beaten nearly to death while I was drunk, and at that point and from then on, it was Me against Them, alone in my deep, dark, angry, hate-filled fortress of a pit. I thank my Lord and Savior, Yeshua HaMashiach, Christ Jesus, for not giving up on me, for pulling me out of that pit, and for the Love that is replacing hate. For me, this Christ is the way I am being shown how to “TRUST”, and be “TRUSTED”. I have come to believe that Forgiveness Ungiven is the source of our Pain and Fear, and that “TRUST” is the substance that Forgiveness is made of. I know that some of you probably think that I have it backwards, but I don’t think so. Until I placed my TRUST in Christ, I never felt Forgiven. Until I felt Forgiven, I could not truly Forgive. Maybe it’s just me. If anyone is interested, I will pick this story up where my brother and I were left with my Aunt when I was 7. If no one is interested now, maybe someone will be someday. May God Bless All of You According to His Riches in Heaven, and May His Grace Be Poured Out Over Your Life From His Overflowing Fountain Of Joy and Unconditional Love Without Limits. Amen.

If you have a response to this post, or a “Trust” story of your own, please consider this blog site a place where you can discard humiliation and trade it for humility.